If there is a specific plan class for a platform that is missing from the micro, mini, or large Collatz applications, please let me know. The solo work units are no longer multi-size so you will need to choose the application within the venue that work best for your machine. If you don't select an application, you should randomly get work from any that have applications for your platform and plan class.

I also increased the feeder to handle 600 work units in shared memory (up from 200), so if you are have problems getting a specific type of work unit, let me know so I can investigate further.

I removed the multi-size logic from the scheduler as well as changed the server_state status of previously generated solo WUs so you should now be able to get work. Please let me know if you continue to have issues getting solo WUs.

Another oddity that's probably worth checking out, may even be connected to the same cause as below..

Ive got a bunch of Solo_Collatz Conjecture 6.0 running on the same computer as the report below.

Currently they are predicted to run for 41hrs or 71hrs. This is not the usual clock-counter problem as they are currently 9% done and the time remaining counter is changing at one second intervals, not jumping ahead of time by leaping a bunch of seconds in one go.

It does seem to be a slow mover, two to three days to complete. PC seems ok, no evidence of a problem that side. It maybe linked to the problem below where the GPU Units seem to have slowed markedly.

They are on PC ID 128929 - I cant point you at one, as none have yet finished, so I added the screen shot below. I've checked the PC, its working fine, the oddities do appear to be originating from the apps.

Machine ID 141349 is a laptop with an ATI video card. A large solo task has started, and should finish in 147 days. Machine ID 142392 has an NVIDIA GTS 250, and a large solo task takes about 3 days, and should finish tomorrow night. I see in Collatz Conjecture Preferences that i can turn off large solo tasks, but 3 days seems OK. Can this be done on a machine by machine basis?

I'm getting Solo WU that are double the max length as before and all are paying 10,000 exactly. Was there a protective limit of 10k that needs to be changed with the longer WU or is this the new norm?
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I'm still only getting Mini w/u's. (I actually did receive 3 Solo tasks 1 time only.) But I see that the unsent queue of Solo is now remaining at zero, presumably due to excessively high demand. I can only guess that the server load must be very high with all these short w/u's on fast GPUs. My overclocked GTX580 runs Mini in <4 min.

I agree with the spirit of mfc's post, but I wouldn't want to see it hard-coded on the server end. Better that each user set up separate Preferences for ARM, CPU only or GPU machines as needed.

My slowest GPU, an ATI on an older laptop, takes about 12 hours on a Mini 6.04 ATI4. My faster GTS 250 should take about 14 minutes for a Mini, as it's 50x faster. And, i have a GTX 650 ti, which should be 5x faster than that, or 750x faster than the ATI. The 650 ti isn't the fastest GPU out there. So, i don't think you can simply say Minis are for CPUs only. My laptop ATI GPU is similar in speed to the laptop's CPUs - perhaps 1x to 2x faster. I'd really like control for each host. An automatic assignment should work, based on a benchmark. But the benchmark would have to be the time taken for previous Collatz work units, not the BOINC benchmarks. For example, my GTS 250 got a 78 hour large work unit, but the estimate was easily ten times that.

The way i'd do it is, for a new machine, issue a micro work unit. If it takes less than ten minutes, issue a mini work unit. If that takes less than an hour then issue a solo unit, and if that takes less than an hour, go for large units - unless the user has said they don't want them. I could see someone having a fast laptop that will be on the net, or even powered on, only sometimes, and long units aren't a good match, or some other reason. I generally like long units on my desktops.

Let's say i have a unit in progress. It's showing 3:04:00 elapsed at 45%. Converting the time to decimal time, 4 (minutes) / 60 = .066. Add the 3 hours, and you get 3.066 hours. Divide this by the percent done: 3.066 / 0.45 = 6.81 hours. That's the total time for the unit. Subtract the 3.066 it has already done, 6.81 - 3.066 = 3.75 hours remaining. These calculations use the job at hand with the CPU/GPU at hand. They've been very accurate for me. But when i compare my result with the Remaining (estimated), it might say anything from 2:30 to 7:20 instead of 3:45. I've gotten reasonable accuracy even when less than 1% of a work unit has been completed, though the more, the better.

Slicker,
I would love to be running the large wu's, but when BOINC assigns one to my intelgpus, the due date is too short to get it processed. When assigns one to one of my GTX690, 660Ti, or 590's cores it should be alright, but I really want to utilize my intelgpu for Collatz too. Please consider giving the large wu's more time. Thanks in advance for your consideration of my request, Col. Rick A. Sponholz
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Your GPUs are fast. An old nVidia 8400 GS or a GT 310 etc. will take 18 hours to run a mini WU. The HD 2400 thru HD 4xxx AMD GPUs also need smaller WUs.

If you don't want your GPUs to run mini WUs but still want them to run on CPUs, uncheck mini and then check the box to run other apps if no work is available. Then your CPUs will still get mini work since there are no solo or large CPU apps.

Another oddity that's probably worth checking out, may even be connected to the same cause as below..

Ive got a bunch of Solo_Collatz Conjecture 6.0 running on the same computer as the report below.

Currently they are predicted to run for 41hrs or 71hrs. This is not the usual clock-counter problem as they are currently 9% done and the time remaining counter is changing at one second intervals, not jumping ahead of time by leaping a bunch of seconds in one go.

It does seem to be a slow mover, two to three days to complete. PC seems ok, no evidence of a problem that side. It maybe linked to the problem below where the GPU Units seem to have slowed markedly.

They are on PC ID 128929 - I cant point you at one, as none have yet finished, so I added the screen shot below. I've checked the PC, its working fine, the oddities do appear to be originating from the apps.

(Deadline clock time shown is UTC)

Just because solo has been switch to non-multi-size doesn't mean that people haven't aborted or errored out other multi-size WUs which is causing them to get resent. From your post,look at the WU names. The last number is the size. You have a lot of different sized WUs which will likely screw up the estimates.

Slicker,
I would love to be running the large wu's, but when BOINC assigns one to my intelgpus, the due date is too short to get it processed. When assigns one to one of my GTX690, 660Ti, or 590's cores it should be alright, but I really want to utilize my intelgpu for Collatz too. Please consider giving the large wu's more time. Thanks in advance for your consideration of my request, Col. Rick A. Sponholz

7 days is plenty of time to get them done as they will finish in under a day. The problem is that BOINC is just too frakking stupid to get the estimates correct as they are based on floating math and Collatz only uses integer math. So, no matter what I set the estimate to be, it is wrong because the ratio of flops to iops is different on different devices. In other words, it is using apples per day to measure oranges per day with its overly complicated algorithm that takes several WUs before it fingures out it is stupid and corrects itself. The K.I.S.S. method would have the correct estimate in under 5 seconds, but you don't get NSF grants for K.I.S.S. type of logic. ;-)

Slicker,
My HOME venue is set for NVidia only and SOLO only, but I haven't received any SOLO WUs on the two machines using that venue. I seem to be able to get mini but they run in only 15-20 minutes on the faster of those machines which is way too short. Am I doing something wrong here?

EDIT: D'OH. The second I posted this I got a bunch. Never Mind.

Is it possible that the SOLO check box on the SCHOOL venue is not working. The last change I made was to move them to the HOME venue from SCHOOL. I did that about 10 minutes before posting.

I'm getting Solo WU that are double the max length as before and all are paying 10,000 exactly. Was there a protective limit of 10k that needs to be changed with the longer WU or is this the new norm?

Thanks for catching that. You guessed the cause exactly. It should be fixed now, but keep an eye on it and let me know if it isn't. I did go back and adjust the credits for users and teams of the 529 WUs where that was the problem. I didn't bother with the host credits though.

That leaves the larger numbers (not larger WU size) causing branching within the code. GPU's stream processors only work in parallel. In other words, if there are 800 stream processors and they are all calculating ax + b = c they work really fast. But, if they have to process logic which requires branching (e.g. if/then/else logic, or a while loop) then the GPU processing slows down considerably because it has to wait until all the stream processors are done branching and are back to parallel processing in unison. If a single stream need to do the "else" while all the other stream processors do the "if" it will branch and they will all sit idle waiting for the one to finish. Sure, it is milliseconds at most, but it adds up with calculating hundreds of steps for billions of numbers. Also, as the GPUs get faster, to run optimally, they need to crunch more numbers at a time which increases the odds of one of the streams branching. Branching means less utilization and therefore less work done in the same amount of time and therefore less credits. We'll have to keep an eye on this.